Chapter 1 — Listening to the Rain to Read Hearts

The winter I turned six years old, my birth mother pinned me down to the heated brick bed, bound my hands and feet with hemp rope, and shoved me mercilessly into a fertilizer sack. Outside, my father stood counting money with a stranger, totaling precisely one thousand two hundred yuan. That was the sum traded for my small life, the exact amount still lacking for the bride price required by my older brother. The buyer had not yet hoisted me away when an old blind woman happened to pass by, heard the muffled struggles coming from the cloth bag, and struck the ground with her walking stick, driving the wretched man off in fright. She reached out, felt my small face with fingertips calloused by time, and murmured softly, This little girl carries a fierce aura of doom in her countenance, yet harbors a divine eye hidden deep within her chest.

Ever since that fateful day, I followed her out to the bustling market stalls, learning the arcane arts of physiognomy, deciphering the written characters of destiny, and reading the silent winds to foretell the coming rain. When I reached the age of eighteen, she quietly passed away from this world. Left entirely alone, I propped up that ragged old stall day after day, reading palms for desperate passersby at the modest price of five yuan a session near the eastern gate of the county marketplace. Until one particular afternoon when Detective Shen of the criminal investigation team, a man notorious for his absolute disdain of ghosts and superstitions, sat quietly in plain clothes right across from my shabby mat for three consecutive days. On the fourth morning, he slammed a cold, heavy photograph of a dead body squarely upon my wooden board and said, Three lives taken. Calculate where the killer is hiding right now.

The winter of 1998 was unnervingly cold. It was so bitter that, as far back as my memories stretched, I had never witnessed such a heavy, suffocating blanket of snow. At six years of age, I had not yet learned to write my own name properly, yet I had etched the number one thousand two hundred deep into my mind. When my mother dragged me roughly out from beneath the heavy cotton quilt, the sky had not yet broken into dawn. I naively believed she intended to take me to the village market. During every lunar twelfth month, the town market always featured vendors selling sugar-coated hawthorn skewers, and occasionally she would purchase one for me. But on that specific morning, she grasped a length of coarse rope instead.

Mother, it hurts, I whimpered.

She remained entirely silent, the strength in her grip tightening ruthlessly. The rope bit deep into the tender flesh of my wrists, drawing forth my tears. In the main room, my father sat smoking cheap tobacco, his voice carrying through the cloth curtain, Keep her quiet; the people are almost here.

Only much later did I discover the true identity of those people. It was a bachelor past his fortieth year hailing from a neighboring village. His wife had long since abandoned him, and he sought to purchase a young girl to raise in his household, waiting until she matured to become his wife. One thousand two hundred yuan. Just enough to piece together the betrothal gift for my brother. Had that blind crone not happened to stroll by that very day, the trajectory of my life would have morphed into an entirely different tragedy. I never learned her surname; the townsfolk simply referred to her as blind Chu. Though sightless, her hearing was preternaturally acute. The fertilizer sack bounced violently upon the wooden tricycle, and trapped inside, I suffocated while silently weeping. My cries were faint, yet she heard them clearly. The bachelor received a heavy blow to the back of his neck from her staff and fled in terror, abandoning his vehicle entirely. She untied the sack and groped along my face, finding my small limbs and a body so emaciated that only sharp bones met her touch.

Whose child is this? she asked.

I dared not utter a sound. She sighed deeply, tucked me firmly under her arm, and felt her way back toward the dilapidated shack where she resided. From that day onward, I bore the name Chu Tingyu. She explained that the day she rescued me happened to coincide with a fierce snowstorm, and as she listened to the falling sleet guiding her home, she bestowed that poetic name upon me. Her battered dwelling sat at the outermost eastern edge of the town, constructed of beaten earth with a roof of corrugated cement sheets. Whenever rain leaked through, basins had to be scattered across every corner of the floor to catch the dripping water. Yet, it remained the warmest sanctuary I had ever known. She was a fortuneteller, not the fraudulent kind lingering near temple gates to scam incense money from the gullible. She possessed genuine skill. Whenever a villager lost a cow and sought her out for guidance, a single direction pointed by her finger usually led to the animal being found. Whenever a family planned a celebration and asked her to choose an auspicious date, things invariably proceeded smoothly. However, she adamantly refused to divine major matters of life and death for outsiders.

What can be seen with the mortal eye may be spoken aloud, but what remains unseen must never be touched, she told me.

That served as the very first lesson she imparted. At seven years of age, I began studying characters under her tutelage, not the standard texts of a schoolhouse, but the heavenly stems, earthly branches, five elements, and the eight trigrams. While other children memorized their multiplication tables, I committed the sixty cyclical years to memory. Naturally, malicious gossip was inevitable.

Blind Chu has gone and kidnapped someone else's daughter to raise as a future daughter-in-law, they whispered.

That girl must be some abandoned stray, a bastard child with no one to claim her.

Hearing such cruel remarks failed to anger me. She told me my destiny was laden with a sharp, lethal edge, and those carrying heavy fates need never fear the idle chatter of others. Those words could never truly reach me. When I turned eight, I began accompanying her out to set up our stall. The town market convened on days ending in three, six, and nine. Our spot rested right beside the eastern livestock market, requiring merely a worn blue cloth spread upon the earth and a bamboo tube filled with divining sticks to commence business. Though she could not perceive their faces, she heard their voices. A person approaching, whether their footsteps were heavy or light, their sighs long or short, their tone hesitant or rushed, revealed volumes to her keen ears.

There is the sound of water in your voice, she would say. Does your household reside near the river? Be exceedingly cautious regarding matters of water in the near future.

Seven times out of ten, her intuition proved uncannily accurate. The remaining few instances, she attributed to the will of heaven, matters beyond human interference. My studies proved even more eclectic than hers. Lacking her blindness, my eyes were sharp. I observed facial structures, palm lines, gaits, and the subtle postures people assumed when settling down. She remarked that I was born to eat from this bowl of rice.

Your eyes are a hundred times more useful than my sightless ones, she often declared.

Life continued in that steady rhythm. Poverty lingered, yet peace prevailed. Until the spring I turned thirteen, when a woman sought out our humble corner. She appeared to be in her early thirties, clad in a faded red padded jacket with disheveled hair, dark circles staining the skin beneath her hollow eyes. Dropping into the seat before us, she immediately burst into tears without uttering a single word. The old woman remained motionless for a long moment before gently prompting her.

Elder sister, my child has been missing for three days now, the woman finally choked out. Please help me divine whether he can still be found.

Silence stretched endlessly. The old woman reached out and grasped my hand, her fingertips icy cold.

Tingyu, child, examine her palm, she instructed.

I lifted my gaze to stare at the stranger. She voluntarily extended her hand, palm upturned, her fingers trembling uncontrollably. I traced the intricate webs of her palm lines. A sudden sensation akin to a chilling draft crept down the back of my neck, tracing my spine. Beneath the table, the old woman gripped my wrist with sudden, fierce strength—a silent signal forbidding speech. I instantly clamped my mouth shut. Shortly after, the woman departed in despair. That very evening, the old woman pulled me close on the kang bed, lowering her voice to a grave whisper.

What did you perceive?

There were trails of fresh blood upon her palm, I whispered. And they belonged to no one else.

She gently patted the crown of my head.

Bear this firmly in mind. Matters of this nature must never be voiced aloud. Once spoken and entangled, you can never wash yourself clean again.

Three days later, a woven plastic fertilizer sack was fished out from the town river. Inside lay the body of a five-year-old boy. The distressed mother was found hanging in her own home shortly after. The townsfolk whispered endlessly about how grief-stricken she was over losing her child, driving her to madness. Only I knew the grim reality. That marked the first occasion I truly feared the sight of my own eyes. From that day forward, whenever reading palms for strangers, I understood precisely what required speaking and what demanded eternal silence. She lived until my eighteenth year. Her final moments arrived precisely on the coldest day of winter. Sitting upright in the main room, her fingers tightly clutching a string of ancient copper coins, she murmured her final words to me.

Little one, from now on you must walk your path alone. Do not meddle in grand affairs, and stay far away from the powerful and corrupt. Your destiny harbors a severe tribulation; surmount it, and you shall find peace.

With those words, she closed her eyes, never to open them again. I buried her beneath the old scholar tree at the eastern edge of the town, leaving no wooden tablet, no inscribed name. Throughout her life, the locals called her blind Chu; in death, not a single soul remembered her true surname. But I remembered. She remained my sole family in this vast world. The morning following her burial, I packed up her bamboo divining sticks and the faded blue cloth, stepping out to set up the stall once more. The location shifted from the quiet town up to the bustling county seat. In the biting cold of the twelfth lunar month in 1998, at eighteen years of age, I sat alone upon the frozen earth of the eastern gate market in Nanhaixian, spreading the worn blue cloth before me with four simple characters written upon it:

Palm reading, five yuan.